Economics

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York's work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations--featuring all-new advice!

There's a reason Alison Green has been called "the Dear Abby of the work world." Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don't know what to say. Thankfully, Green does--and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You'll learn what to say when

- coworkers push their work on you--then take credit for it
- you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit "reply all"
- you're being micromanaged--or not being managed at all
- you catch a colleague in a lie
- your boss seems unhappy with your work
- your cubemate's loud speakerphone is making you homicidal
- you got drunk at the holiday party

Praise for Ask a Manager

"A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green's] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work."--Booklist (starred review)

"The author's friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers' lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience."--Library Journal (starred review)

"I am a huge fan of Alison Green's Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces--and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor."--Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide

"Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way."--Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together

The For Sale by Owner Handbook guides you step-by-step through the home-selling process. It gives you inside real estate trade secrets to sell your home like a pro.

"With deep reporting and graceful storytelling, Sarah Kessler reveals the ground truth of a key part of the American workforce. Her analysis is both astute and nuanced, making GIGGED essential reading for anyone interested in the future of work." --Daniel H. Pink, author of WHEN and DRIVE

The full-time job is disappearing--is landing the right gig the new American Dream?

One in three American workers is now a freelancer. This "gig economy"--one that provides neither the guarantee of steady hours nor benefits--emerged out of the digital era and has revolutionized the way we do business. High-profile tech start-ups such as Uber and Airbnb are constantly making headlines for the disruption they cause to the industries they overturn. But what are the effects of this disruption, from Wall Street down to Main Street? What challenges do employees and job-seekers face at every level of professional experience?

In the tradition of the great business narratives of our time, Gigged offers deeply-sourced, up-close-and-personal accounts of our new economy. From the computer programmer who chooses exactly which hours he works each week, to the Uber driver who starts a union, to the charity worker who believes freelance gigs might just transform a declining rural town, journalist Sarah Kessler follows a wide range of individuals from across the country to provide a nuanced look at how the gig economy is playing out in real-time.

Kessler wades through the hype and hyperbole to tackle the big questions: What does the future of work look like? Will the millennial generation do as well as their parents? How can we all find meaningful, well-paid work?

In Invisible Influence, the New York Times bestselling author of Contagious explores the subtle influences that affect the decisions we make--from what we buy, to the careers we choose, to what we eat.

"Jonah Berger has done it again: written a fascinating book that brims with ideas and tools for how to think about the world." --Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit

If you're like most people, you think your individual tastes and opinions drive your choices and behaviors. You wear a certain jacket because you liked how it looked. You picked a particular career because you found it interesting. The notion that our choices are driven by our own personal thoughts and opinions is patently obvious. Right? Wrong.

Without our realizing it, other people's behavior has a huge influence on everything we do at every moment of our lives, from the mundane to the momentous. Even strangers have an impact on our judgments and decisions: our attitudes toward a welfare policy shift if we're told it is supported by Democrats versus Republicans (even though the policy is the same). But social influence doesn't just lead us to do the same things as others. In some cases we imitate others around us. But in other cases we avoid particular choices or behaviors because other people are doing them. We stop listening to a band because they go mainstream. We skip buying the minivan because we don't want to look like a soccer mom.

By understanding how social influence works, we can decide when to resist and when to embrace it--and learn how we can use this knowledge to exercise more control over our own behavior. In Invisible Influence, Jonah Berger "is consistently entertaining, applying science to real life in surprising ways and explaining research through narrative. His book fascinates because it opens up the moving parts of a mysterious machine, allowing readers to watch them in action" (Publishers Weekly).